food allergies

I have recently discovered that I have food allergies. Let me just begin by mourning the foods I can no longer eat:
pizza
milk
chocolate
cheese
yoghurt
ice cream
many cookies
butter
caramel
and lots of stuff that one would not even think of like Cliff Bars and all sorts of snacks.
all because it contains milk or a derivative thereof or psyllium.

Now, I'm done mourning. I'm done because I feel so much better now that I'm not ingesting things that make me ill. Not that I don't have the odd moment when I realise that I can't have something. But it is easily over whelmed by how well I feel. Plus, it's a good thing that I've been drinking soymilk for years and I like it. Soy yoghurt is okay too. And soy ice cream is good. The consistnecy of some things is different but, well, like I said, the rewards are overwhelming.

And all this makes sense when I remember that I could not have formula based from cow's milk as a baby. (I was told. I don't actually *remember*.) It would seem that at some point my mother gave me cow's milk and I seemed okay. But I always had a mild reaction. At that point I did not have the words to describe it and later, when I did, the reaction was one that I considered normal. Obviously, not deadly. But the difference in how I feel is absolutely amazing. Amazing.